Order Up! Review

This is how you make a casual Wii game.

Both Diner Dash and Cooking Mama have been very successful casual games involving food. One is about managing a cake shop and the latter is about culinary preparation. It occurred to developer Super Villain Studios that these two games might be mashed together to create a new casual game that offers gesture-controlled food prep and task management. Zoo was right, and the result, Order Up!, is a surprisingly fun restaurant sim. Publishers should take note: this is how you make a casual Wii game.

The first thing you'll notice about Order Up! is that it doesn't look like crap. The visuals are clean, the character design is unique, and the inhabitants of Port Abello are well animated. There is also an impressive amount of voice acting in the game, giving your patrons and fellow restaurant staff a lot of personality.

Players begin by choosing a male or female chef and then work their way up the food chain of dining establishments on the island. We all start at the bottom, and on Port Abello that means the greasy spoon Burger Face. But soon you'll buy your own place and, after you've impressed the local food critic, you'll be able to expand to bigger operations. Gameplay is separated into days where you take orders, prepare dishes, and then count your money. Each level of restaurant has certain goals that need to be met (grow your menu, earn a certain amount of money) before you can proceed to the next eatery.

The clock is ticking as soon as a customer places an order. You'll use motion controls to prepare each ingredient of a menu item. In Order Up!, the gestures aren't unnecessary waggles that would be better input with a button press. They actually make sense. You use the remote like a knife to chop vegetables. Turn it on its side to flip a burger. Shake it up and down to grate cheese. You have the option of using the nunchuk for navigation, but the entire game can be played comfortably with just the remote in one hand.

After your diner, the Gravy Chug, you'll open a Mexican joint called El Fuego.

Even though there are numerous motion controls for food prep, Order Up! is really about effectively managing your time. You can prepare ingredients in any order you like, and some take longer to address than others. There are multiple areas of your kitchen (grill, fryer, oven, cutting board) so you'll need to multitask. You can also hire line chefs to help with the preparation.

Outside of these general game mechanics, there are nice extras like a farmers' market where you can buy black market recipes and shop for spices. Many customers will have particular tastes, and if you season their dish accordingly you'll earn a bigger tip.

There are a couple of unnecessary mini-games that pop up, reminding us of what most casual Wii offerings are like. From time to time your restaurant will become infested with rats and you have to point the remote to flick them away. When the health inspector shows up he'll want you to wash dishes in front of him so, again, you point and swirl a dish rag around the plate. But these are brief instances that don't interfere with the core gameplay too much. It is disappointing that a multiplayer mode wasn't involved. A one-on-one battle to see who could get orders out fast enough would have been fun.

Order Up! is a well-made casual game, and it will appeal most to younger gamers and the mainstream crowd. While I like the game mechanics, it is kind of a one trick pony that involves a lot of repetition. It satisfies in short play sessions but doesn't have the legs to hold core gamers' interest for long.

The Verdict

If only all casual games were of this quality. The developers took the time to create some nice visuals, a unique art style, and motion controls that actually fit the experience. But here's the real evidence: my fellow IGN editors frequently stop by my desk to see what crappy Wii game I'm playing. After watching me play Order Up! for a few minutes, they all said, "Wow, I kind of want to play this!"